Re: Small Format SOFT focus lenses
I have enjoyed reading this thread. Thank you one and all!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
mdarnton
No one has mentioned the low end Lens Baby lenses. Mostly they're junky, but one is pretty good. My wife needed a head shot recently and after trying a few with my normal Nikon D7200/50mm combo, I brought out the Lensbaby Soft Focus. This is not their kit lens, which is just a single element, but a real lens with a flat field and good to the edges. I got it because I had been looking at their new $500 fancy metal soft focus macro lens and noticed that this one does almost the same thing for a lot less money (probably why they discontinued it when they brought out the fancy one).
I'm glad you brought up the Lensbaby. I have gotten interested in the Velvet 56, the fancy $500 metal lens you mentioned. This lens apparently uses Uncorrected spherical aberrations. From the images I have seen, it seems somewhat like the Imagon in effect, although the method is different and the effect is controlled by means of the aperture rather than disks.
Perhaps I will take one for the team and order up a copy :)
Re: Small Format SOFT focus lenses
Gelatin-silver photograph on Freestyle Private Reserve VC FB photographic paper from a Kodak Tmax 100 negative exposed in a Mamiya RB67 camera fitted with a custom modified 65mm lens with standard optics removed and replaced by a single meniscus lens.
Re: Small Format SOFT focus lenses
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Re: Small Format SOFT focus lenses
Attachment 153105
Pentax 120mm soft focus lens, K2 filter, Acros developed in FX-39, Plustek scanner.
Re: Small Format SOFT focus lenses
My collection of small Rodenstock Imagons.
Use these on my Plaubel Makiflexes.
120mm, 150mm, 200mm, 250mm, and 300mm.
https://c7.staticflickr.com/2/1475/2...2eefc428_k.jpg2016-02-22 16.49.40 by Nokton48, on Flickr
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Re: Small Format SOFT focus lenses
A quick lash-up attaching a 120mm f:2.1 Wollason Meniscus to an RB67...
Attachment 159048
Three examples: wide open, f:5.6, and f:11 ...
Attachment 159049 Attachment 159050 Attachment 159053
I've got to design some sort of adapter for easy set-up…
Reinhold
More on the lens here...
http://www.largeformatphotography.in...eniscus-lenses
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Re: Small Format SOFT focus lenses
Designing an RB adapter is not simple, I'm still working on it…
In the meantime, here's an easy way to mount a lens to your RB with black vinyl electrical tape
In this example, the lens is on a hardboard clone of the common 96x99mm Technika board.
Thus it'll work on lots of 4x5's as well as any RB67.
Attachment 159352Attachment 159353
Reinhold
More about these lenses here:
http://re-inventedphotoequip.com/Lenses.html
Re: Small Format SOFT focus lenses
Gelatin-silver photograph on Ultrafine Silver Eagle VC FB photographic paper. image size 21.4cm X 16.2cm, from a Tmax 100 negative exposed in a Mamiya RB67 single lens reflex camera fitted with a 200mm f8 meniscus lens.
Re: Small Format SOFT focus lenses
I got a lens I've always wanted to try at a yard sale. A Voigtlander Prominent Nokton 50/1.5. It is slightly soft at some angles, wide open. I got it on this camera, and kludged an adapter for the non-focusing mount with an old Leica goggle closeup adapter.
https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4174/3...52441668_c.jpg
Re: Small Format SOFT focus lenses
Soft-focus lenses have been popular with smaller formats for quite a while -- and they are making a comeback -- not that they ever left. Here is a seven page (they RARELY did that!) article from the 1970's by David Brooks in Peteren's Photography:
http://www.subclub.org/fujinon/softfocuscompressed.pdf
It mainly covers lenses designed for 35mm to medium format cameras -- and as mentioned above, there were many.
Nowadays, there are new, and popular, ways to get softer images in the smaller formats, from pin-holes, SWINKS, Loreo "Lens-in-a-Cap", Lens-Babys, soft-focus/diffusion filters, close-up filters (WITHOUT A LENS), DIY soft-focus lenses removed from old, dead, cheap simple cameras and adapted, etc. More details on some of these at:
http://www.subclub.org/fujinon/close-up.htm